What Do You Fight For?
by xIMrGibbsIx
Summary: Andromeda wasn't what they expected, but it's a new home. All Vetra wants is a safe place for her and her sister to live. And Scott just wants to fill the shoes of the most important title in the entire Initiative while securing a safe harbor for every Milky Way pioneer. Vetra/Scott. Slow Burn. Rated M for violence, language, and eventual sexual themes. Will update once a week.
1. Stubborn

Vetra watched as the new Pathfinder roared across a deserted colony-turned-battlefield on the surface of Eos. His initiative armor was bulky and nearly motorized to maximum potential. There was nothing she could do as he put his compact shotgun back onto his thigh and charged an Anointed kett with his bare hands. Well, _nearly_ bare. Bright orange blades were blazing from either wrist and deflecting off of his target's shields, draining them to fill his own.

He'd closed the distance between them with an overwhelming biotic charge that had given him the advantage of throwing his enemy off balance. Kett blood stained the ground beneath him in green spatters. When it fell dead, Ryder looked up at his turian squadmate with a smile before yelling again. "Vetra behind you!"

She'd been too busy marveling at his brutal fighting style to realize they hadn't cleared the area as they thought. Before she could react, Ryder ripped a pull field until the Chosen Kett flew past her, smashing into her shoulder. As Vetra fell to the ground, she saw the hostile alien fly across the battlefield and crash into the pathfinder's omni-blades before he slammed it down. The blades burned through the hot flesh they were cutting into.

"Come on! There's more coming!" He yelled sprinting into the Kett base that had sprung up overnight. Vetra took hold of a krogan hand that had extended out to her so she could get back to her feet. "He's a damn maniac. You'd figure that with all that depends on him, he'd calm down a little." Vetra chuckled. "Drack… it's Ryder. Don't tell me that you believe that." She was only answered by his trailing laugh.

Yet as she walked with him, behind her own chuckle, fear was edging at her mind.

 _"You can't keep doing this, Scott. This is the fifth time that I've had to patch you up…"_ Vetra could hear Lexi giving their Pathfinder another lecture between each suture that she used to close a wound that had been torn across his left shoulder blade. The turian stared at the two from the doorway, her mandibles pulled a little high with a slight flare.

It was an odd way to study him: sitting on a chair, leaning on his knee with an elbow while Lexi worked. Each suture she put in knitted his skin back together and quickly dissolved away, leaving only the lightest mark along his light russet colored skin. A faded pink crossing a small expanse of dark olive. Watching the doctor work showed Vetra old scars that Ryder had gathered throughout the years that she hadn't known him.

A bullet hole on his ribcage. The bite marks above his right hip. Only after seeing the slash that dipped below Scott's waistline did she think it would be awkward if she were caught staring, even if it was just out of curiosity. "So, what bit you?" She asked, announcing her presence. He laughed and shook his head. "Oh, you saw that, huh?"

"Kinda hard not to, I mean a solid ten inches of scar tissue is a little intriguing." Scott nodded before smiling. "True. A few years back, I led an N7 squad to clean out a particularly asshole-ish group of blood-pack mercenaries. Ah! Careful, Doc. You went a little deep." Lexi's usual monotone maintained its reliability as she shot back _you'll live._

"Long story short, it ended up with me fighting a Krogan Warlord on Omega. I almost had him, but he slipped away after his pack of varren nearly tore me to shreds. My armor kept me safe for the most part, but one bite slipped through. Bastard took out my appendix for me, ha." When he laughed, it made his body shift, and he was poked again. "Ah! Hey!" "That one was all you. Now, _hold still_."

Scott huffed and made sure not to wiggle when he continued. "My team managed to get me to a med-bay, but the Warlord escaped." Vetra was impressed. Most humans, hell, even most krogan would have been annihilated by an old and experienced Warlord. They were, most often, the smartest and most ruthless enemies to fight. "So, did you ever get him?" Scott shook his head again. "Didn't have to. He was killed by that Archangel dude that was making the rounds at that time."

"The vigilante? I remember him. Traded some cargo with him a few times. He was always really fair with the prices, but when I asked him where he got his merchandise one time, he said to me _if I told that, you might be tempted to return them to their rightful owners._ Considering how many merc bands he knocked off in his prime, I wasn't too concerned how he… _procured_ his goods." Vetra laughed at the implication and remembered how many times she'd done the exact same thing just so her and Sid could eat.

"Fair enough… Hey Doc, we done yet?" Lexi examined him as her last medi-gel suture closed the final gap in his skin before dissolving away. "We are. Now, your skin is healed, but your muscle is still torn. You're going to have to rest it for a while." _"Pathfinder, I can accelerate your healing to repair the muscular damage within a few hours, though I would recommend a large meal."_

Scott looked up at the doctor who had painstakingly stitched him up for over half an hour. "Hey, there we go! Vetra. We still have nearly six hours of daylight left on EOS. Be ready to roll out in two hours with Liam." While she had been about to respond, Vetra decided it was best to walk away once Lexi started yelling at him again.

 _You're too stubborn for your own good, Ryder._ She thought as she made her way back the hangar to ready her equipment and tell Liam to do the same. _I might want to inform the rest of the crew to Avoid their physicals today too._


	2. A New Beginning

Vetra laughed as Scott cussed out his armor for how much ash had accumulated along it's pocked surface after the vault had cleansed itself. While he was rubbing a rag over it, he turned to her and pointed. "Yeah, keep laughing Buckbeak, just wait until you have to wipe down your armor. Good luck with that carapace." She shook her head and shrugged. "My plan was just to strip and throw my armor in the shower to let it wash off."

The turian's brilliantly simple idea stunned him silent. There was a small twitch of his brow that clearly said _dammit_. Then he bit his lip and smiled, but it wasn't one of those _I'm happy_ smiles. It was defeated and only really served to show off his white teeth. Even those were another thing to look it. Something was odd about human teeth to Vetra. Blunted and flat, they made her wonder how they ever became Earth's apex predator.

As his smile ended, he looked at her, his golden eyes boring in the emerald of hers. "You've been watching me do this for over twenty minutes." Vetra nodded, flaring her mandibles at him. "You didn't think to share your clever plan with me?" Her tone turned shocked with just the right dash of offended. "Are you implying that you want to strip with me in the shower? Pathfinder, how lewd of you." "Ha, you spikey dinosaur. I'd rather not slip and impale myself on your spurs. Thank you very much."

When he'd brought up the subject of impaling, it made the image of their fight with the kett only a few hours ago pop back into her mind, putting a light grimace on the plates of her brow. "True enough." After she spoke, there was a quiet moment between the two where neither had anything to say, but that's what they appreciated about one another.

Scott wasn't one for talking on most occasions, which was fine. Vetra didn't mind the silence, but just when she thought it had settled in, he broke it. "Hey, uh… I just wanted to say thanks." She tilted her head at him, confused. "I'd say you're welcome, but I don't know what I did." She said with a chuckle. It looked like he was struggling to find his words or how to say them so that they made sense.

"It's just, you and Drack are almost the only people that are content to let me handle situations in a way I find appropriate in the moment. Cora is up my ass because I stole her job. Liam is always on me to find outposts. Peebee keeps hounding me to track down Remnant tech. Lexi thinks I'm a reckless moron, but she doesn't realize how much combat we actually see. Ugh." He said, letting out a heavy sigh, head hanging while his fingers rubbed at either temple.

"You and Drack… you don't blow smoke up my ass and you don't try to tell me how to do my job, even though if you did, I'd probably listen." Maybe out of habit, Ryder turned away from his squad member and started to organize his armor, deciding to get the rest of the soot off later. Vetra considered what he'd said. The team knew how much attitude Cora had been giving him, but she hadn't thought about how much the rest of them could be putting on him.

"Look, Lexi cares. Believe it or not, and Liam just has a good heart that he wears on his sleeve of emotions. He's dumb, sometimes, but he still has good intentions. Peebee? Hell, she's just selfish. She might commit to the team at some point, just leave her be, for now." She stepped towards him and put a hand on his shoulder, but as she went to speak, he winced and hissed under his breath. Her hand was wet and warm when she pulled it back.

"What the hell? Scott, you're wounded." The pathfinder rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Nah, it's minor, Sam said that if I can find some sort of sealant, he can ramp up my body to take care of it." In hindsight, Scott would later go on to admit that it wasn't smart to avoid his doctor while injured, but at that second, he didn't want to get scolded again. "Ryder, there is a hole next to your neck, take off your shirt." His lip turned up in mischievous half-curl. "Wow, Vetra. Trying to get me out of my clothes already? What would the others say?"

"They would probably say that you should let me help you, if you're really that stubborn about not going to see Lexi." She said, eyeing him in a way that let him know that he had no choice. With a click of his tongue, Scott sat at his mod bench and took off his shirt, revealing an open wound that was no more than a centimeter wide. A clean flesh wound, but still fresh and untreated. "See, this is how people die. They ignore their injury, get an infection, and die. Now sit still while I give you some medi-gel and a burn salve."

"Okay, what's the salve for?" Vetra flicked the back of his head before answering, the hard metal of her gloved talon making a satisfying thud against the bone. "Because it's a plasma burn, probably an after effect of a charge weapon." While he sat, the turian worked a little magic, coating the torn edges of his skin with a light touch to avoid hurting him. After the wound had been sealed, she treated a few inches of surrounding skin with the salve before placing a bio-mesh patch over it.

"Ooh, what's that thing?" Scott said as he ran a hand over the fabric that she laid over the wound. "It's a patch made of omni-gel fibers and a positively charged particle field that hyperactivates the medi-gel and salve. This wound will be healed under an hour without stitches." Ryder's eyes were wide as he stared at her. "Holy shit, then why don't we have a whole crate of these?" Vetra returned to her spot near the nomad and leaned up against it, arms crossed and weight lazily held by the vehicle.

"Because they don't officially exist yet and they are not cost effective at the moment. Nearly thirty-five thousand credits a patch." After hearing the price tag, Scott nearly wanted to take it off. "It is reusable though, so if you ever have a small knick that you don't want Lexi to see, feel free to use it." And it was back, Ryder's smile, more appreciative this time around, warmer too.

"You've no idea how much trouble this is going to save me." Even though the tone of their conversational flow had been bright for the last few minutes, Vetra couldn't help be brought back to a nagging question in the back of her head.

"Scott…" She started, waiting until his relaxed gaze gliding up to hers, a small tool in either hand. "Mhm-hm?" He hummed, acknowledging her. "What do you fight for?" The question caught him off guard, none too severely, just enough for him to not have a good answer. Or a good enough lie. "Well, I knew someone would get around to that. Do you want the contrived bullshit that I was prepared to throw at the next person to ask, or would you prefer the honest truth?"

Given how he laid out his response, answering a question with a question, she could tell that the truth might not be what she expected. "I think it's obvious." She answered, leaning into her words and continuing to meet his eyes. Scott let out a long breath and let it trail from his lungs at a slow crawl before clearing his throat. "I fight for myself. I don't do all of this because everyone depends on me. I do it because I have no choice if I want my own life."

Pausing to stand from his chair, Ryder began to lightly pace back and forth in front of his weapon bench. "That being said, I hold little to no concern for anyone in the Initiative. This trip was all about escaping. My problems. My fears. There was nothing in the Milky Way for me by the time we left. No relationship, my job had always kept me occupied and settling down makes me restless. Then I lost my job because my father got himself black-listed, which meant we all did." Vetra heard his tone change. These weren't good memories, she could tell.

"After his AI research came to light, the N7 program dropped me and stripped us from their records to avoid the bad publicity. My command was taken from me and I was dishonorably discharged along with him. Then my mother died, making it so there was literally nothing in the entire galaxy to care about, until my father pitched this idea to me. It was an immediate way out. So I took it."

"Now I have an impossible job left to me by a man who didn't know I had a middle name for the first thirteen years of my life, no home to speak of, and the hopes and dreams of tens of thousands resting on my shoulders. But I don't fight for them. I fight for me. For a new beginning." When he'd finished, Vetra felt that she'd learned more about the human in one conversation, than anyone had since the Tempest first left drydock.

"So… has your opinion of me changed at all?" She considered her answer. At first, it was going to be a simple _no_ , yet everything he'd said mirrored her own motivations. After all, the only thing she cared about was establishing a stable and safe life for her and Sid. In truth, she had the same mentality, nothing else mattered except what affected her or her family.

"No. In fact, I think that's a perfect answer. A new beginning. A better one. On your own terms. That's all you could ever ask for." She said with a smile, looking at her Pathfinder in a better and brighter light than before.


End file.
